McBride Furniture closing after 73 years

FOREST — Clifford "Mick" McBride is closing McBride Furniture, in Forest, over 73 years after a banker told him to abandon his dream of a furniture business and instead get a lunch bucket and a factory job. The store drew customers from 100 miles away in all directions and grew to become a "village" with seven buildings. It even shipped furniture to clients in the United Kingdom. McBride, 17 years old when he was underestimated by the banker, had inherited a keen business sense from the father he did not get to know until he was 60. Mick McBride parlayed advantages like the low overhead cost of operating out of little Forest. He found and seized upon other advantages like buying furniture directly from the manufacturer, eliminating the middleman. "We were able to be very competitive," McBride, 91, said. He also had a laser-like focus. After his parents separated when McBride was very young, he went from being wealthy to being poor. After his father was gone, his father's business partner cheated McBride's mother. "I had a goal when I was a kid. I respected the grocer and I highly respected the man that was in the clothing business" in his hometown, Bloomville, he said. "I decided that was one of the two businesses and I wanted to be a businessman." He later found that going into a grocery or clothing business would be too expensive for him. The furniture business did not require such big investments in equipment, he said. He and his wife, Marcile, started the business in their Dunkirk home before moving it to Forest a few years later. The building on Mad River Street had formerly been occupied by a grocery store. "I think I paid $17,000 for this building. At that time our competitor paid $140,000 for a building in Findlay," he said. "So our overhead was quite low. We were able to be very competitive." He considers that cost advantage one of the keys to the business's success. Buying directly from manufacturers further helped keep McBride Furniture's prices competitive. Word spread far and wide about its prices. When customers came, what they saw on the price tag was generally what they paid. McBride's did not deal much, avoiding a race to the bottom. McBride paid tribute to his wife and business partner, Marcile, who is in the final stages of dementia, he said. "She was a key part of this business," he said. "Actually, she did better in school than I did." In school, she was called "The Brain" by her classmates. In the business with her husband, Marcile McBride sold and did "whatever" had to be done, he said.